As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.

An interim report - that is what an autobiography is.

Sometimes I dislike women, I dislike us all, because of our capacity for not-thinking when it suits us; we choose not to think when we are reaching our for happiness.

...or like an old friend one has known too well and doesn't want to see.

I don't think San Francisco needs defending. I never meet anyone who doesn't love the place, Americans or others.

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal.